Chattanooga City Council member Chris Anderson speaks as a committee discusses a proposed change in the city’s sound ordinance in October of 2014.NASHVILLE – While city councils in Chattanooga and Knoxville are urging Tennessee lawmakers to approve Gov. Bill Haslam’s proposed Insure Tennessee plan, the governor himself sees little change of heart among his GOP colleagues who dominate the General Assembly.
“Last [session], when somebody said, ‘Will you bring it up next year?’ I said, ‘Well, something will have to change’ because it wasn’t like we just barely lost,” the Republican told Nashville Rotary Club members last week.
The governor added: “Something will have to change in the state or on the national scene for that to happen. To be frank, I haven’t seen anything that’s [given] me that kind of encouragement.”
Senate committees twice killed the governor’s idea of using federal Affordable Care Act dollars to extend Medicaid to an estimated 280,000 low-income Tennesseans.
Critics are philosophically opposed, but note their concerns also include issues such as costs to the state and whether Tennessee could get out of the program.